Offensive Weapons Bill (Second sitting)

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Q Slightly moving on, I have a particular interest in air guns, due to an incident in my constituency. Is there any information on the proportion of these sorts of weapons used around crimes?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: The use of air weapons is captured by the Office for National Statistics around firearms offences. It is not something that NABIS captures, because they do not fall within our criteria.

[Karin Smyth]

Sorry, can you say that again? They do not require—

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: The use of air weapons is not captured by NABIS, but they are captured under the Office for National Statistics in the wider use of air weapons. They are not offensive weapons that we see in NABIS or collate statistics on. I am not sure we can answer that question.

[Karin Smyth]

Q Do you have a view about licensing?

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: It is not something on which, at the moment, we have an evidential picture to put either way.

Assistant Chief Constable Orford: We have replied to the NPCC consultation, and it is a bit like with some of the aspects in this Bill. I think a lot of it comes down to community tolerance, public tolerance and the tolerance of Parliament. There are a lot of arguments in relation to air weapon risks and dangers. If you look at what happened when Scotland changed its legislation, more than 20,000 weapons were surrendered for a population of 4 million. As with the antiques, we have no idea exactly how many air weapons are in the rest of England and Wales, but extrapolating that number from Scotland would indicate that there is a significant number out there. I think it is a matter for Parliament and its tolerance of risk.

From a licensing perspective, were those weapons to be placed on certificate for England and Wales, that would place a significant burden on firearm licensing departments, which are already processing more requirements and checks in order to ensure that the right people have what we have already established is a significant number of shotguns and firearms.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Q Is there anything that you think should be included in the Bill to ensure that fewer guns are used in violence—gang violence, youth violence and so on? Is resourcing an issue for your different departments and areas? I have just been looking through the consultation document you submitted. What we have is quite vague, so I wonder whether you have more information to give us about that.

Detective Chief Superintendent Chilton: In terms of the criminal use of firearms, we obviously see quite a broad range of firearms used. We see firearms that we class as being of UK origin, which have been here since the war days and were here when the legislation was changed, and we see firearms that are smuggled in from abroad and used in crime. We see quite a mix around the criminal use of firearms. I do not have a breakdown to give you, but it is quite a mixed picture, and it changes daily.

In terms of resources—I can speak only for the National Ballistics Intelligence Service—I have just secured an uplift in resources from the National Police Chiefs Council, so we are actually growing to cope with the increasing challenge of the criminal use of firearms.

Gregg Taylor: I would only add what I have already mentioned about ammunition. Again, guns are useless without ammunition, so ammunition is the key to some of the problems we see. There is a lack of control and legislation around purchasing and acquiring ammunition components. People can freely acquire all the equipment they need to make ammunition; the offence kicks in only once you have made a round.